Funk Essentials Level 1

Start your funk journey here!

Hey guys, welcome to Funk Essentials Level 1! In this 20 lesson course, we'll be taking your funk playing from absolute scratch, all the way up to confidently playing through 3 full funk tracks!

These tracks span from early James Brown-style grooves to modern Bruno Mars style funky pop, and plenty in between.

Here's how we'll do it...

To get there, our focus is to build up, and master, the absolute core essentials you need to play any funk track. At the absolute base of everything you do in funk is the 16th note strumming pattern. The right hand is your metronome, your timepiece, your engine driving the groove... And without it, nothing is gonna sound funky!

I would suggest that 50% of the funk ethos is to have that right-hand engine running, and with the exercises and tracks we'll work through in this course, you will have that absolutely nailed!

... And then the fretting hand!

From there, we start to sync the left hand by developing all the chords, lead lines and ghost note subtleties you need to play in any style of funk. Specifically, this will mean tackling dominant 9ths, 13ths, minor 7ths across the neck, as well as diving deep into the idea of ghost notes and muted strings. Finally, we even introduce and develop your "bubble picking" which essentially takes your lead guitar skills, and turns them into funky rhythmical parts that add a whole new dimension to your funk playing.